one sentence missing from the article for the curious:"According to the Old Farmer's Almanac, the longer the middle brown band, the milder and shorter the coming winter; the shorter the brown band, the longer and more severe winter will be."So the stock photo isn't from this year either.good effort John Beauge!

Frankly, I'll trust my Pap Hart farther than I'd ever trust any weatherman on the face of the planet. My Pap kept a weather diary for longer than I've been alive. Every day, recording temperature, humidity, cloud-cover, barometric pressure, and precipitation totals. The man has an uncanny ability to assess what the weather is going to do, simply because he has observed it in its beauty and fury for so long. He swears by, and can usually explain the root of, a lot of these "old wives tales" regarding weather and when to plant and when not to plant.

When we asked him about a month ago at his 80th birthday celebration/picnic what he thought this winter would be like?

"Cold." Was the first word out of his mouth. "Early, and cold."

...I'm making sure my house is well sealed this winter.

/Seriously, the man only has a 6th grade education, but he's by far and away the wisest man I've ever known. It is my greatest honor to be named after him, as the eldest son of the eldest son.//I will be heartbroken on the day he passes.

During the 20-some years I lived in the NC mountains the wooly worm caterpillar never failed to accurately predict the severity and duration of the snowpack. And count those foggy mornings in August- they will roughly equal the number of snowfalls./Traditional date of first snow in high NWNC mountains 18 OCT//granny clampett clone

I see wooly bear caterpillars all the time up here in Minnesota. Never before heard them referred to as 'worms' though. This time of year they are usually curled up into tight little bristly balls. I don't blame them. They feel pretty interesting to the touch.

Fun fact: Pennsylvania ski resorts, for the last 10 years or so, have been expanding their summer offerings because they expect that within the coming years winters will not be cold enough for long enough to support a viable skiing business.

How is the Ohio Renaissance Festival this year? Anything new or same old same old? My wife and I used to go but it was the same thing every year it seemed, so we stopped going a few years ago.

/I do miss getting a mug though

Pretty much the same. Been going for 21 years. (missed a few, but I am back now)

Saturday and Sunday were the busiest 2 days in years.(possibly ever). Albannach and Tartan Terrors were there, and we were closed the previous Sunday because the site flooded, so it was an interesting combination of factors that ended up with us having an absolutely AMAZING weekend.

The severity of the winter, submittard, will be determined by whatever the IPCC report says the severity of the winter will be. Because anything related to weather or climate follows the IPCC by definition. And if it doesn't, then the weather is wrong, and is subject to an asskicking by the IPCC.

slapmastered:Frankly, I'll trust my Pap Hart farther than I'd ever trust any weatherman on the face of the planet. My Pap kept a weather diary for longer than I've been alive. Every day, recording temperature, humidity, cloud-cover, barometric pressure, and precipitation totals. The man has an uncanny ability to assess what the weather is going to do, simply because he has observed it in its beauty and fury for so long. He swears by, and can usually explain the root of, a lot of these "old wives tales" regarding weather and when to plant and when not to plant.

When we asked him about a month ago at his 80th birthday celebration/picnic what he thought this winter would be like?

"Cold." Was the first word out of his mouth. "Early, and cold."

...I'm making sure my house is well sealed this winter.

/Seriously, the man only has a 6th grade education, but he's by far and away the wisest man I've ever known. It is my greatest honor to be named after him, as the eldest son of the eldest son.//I will be heartbroken on the day he passes.

Buck up, maybe he'll get hit by a bus and you can call him "Pap Smear"...

dittybopper:slapmastered: Seriously, the man only has a 6th grade education, but he's by far and away the wisest man I've ever known.

Never confuse formal education with intelligence. I've know people who were very educated but unintelligent, and I've known very intelligent people who were uneducated.

My intention was neither to denigrate formal education nor glorify it. Different people have different requirements for their lives. My dad, for example, was the first member of that family to graduate from college. He has a degree in Accounting. Know what he does for a living? He followed in the family business, and bought out Pap's logging business when Pap wanted to retire. He doesn't feel like he wasted his education, but has said to me that he might have done it differently if he had it to do over again.

I personally couldn't have achieved my current career, which has been my goal for much of my life, without my formal education. You can't be a Mechanical Engineer though a (formal or informal) apprenticeship track, at least not in the modern world. So, for me, formal education was a must. That doesn't mean I completely neglected learning, listening, and absorbing as much as I could, and still thankfully can, from my Pap Hart, each and every time I'm around him.

I absolutely agree that both types of "intelligence" are important, and unfortunately rarely found together. My own "mental slang" for differentiating the two defines "book smart" as the "education level" or "intelligence," and someone's "street smarts" or "experience smarts" as their "wisdom." Hence, my statement regarding my Pap's wisdom. My wife and I have a theory that an inverse relationship exists between "intelligence" and "wisdom." We've known a fair sampling of people who have an extremely high "intelligence," who are absolutely lacking in common sense or other common indicators of "wisdom," and vice versa.

Loaf's Tray:slapmastered: Frankly, I'll trust my Pap Hart farther than I'd ever trust any weatherman on the face of the planet. My Pap kept a weather diary for longer than I've been alive. Every day, recording temperature, humidity, cloud-cover, barometric pressure, and precipitation totals. The man has an uncanny ability to assess what the weather is going to do, simply because he has observed it in its beauty and fury for so long. He swears by, and can usually explain the root of, a lot of these "old wives tales" regarding weather and when to plant and when not to plant.

When we asked him about a month ago at his 80th birthday celebration/picnic what he thought this winter would be like?

"Cold." Was the first word out of his mouth. "Early, and cold."

...I'm making sure my house is well sealed this winter.

/Seriously, the man only has a 6th grade education, but he's by far and away the wisest man I've ever known. It is my greatest honor to be named after him, as the eldest son of the eldest son.//I will be heartbroken on the day he passes.

Buck up, maybe he'll get hit by a bus and you can call him "Pap Smear"...

2/10.

I don't appreciate being made light of, but I put it out there first, so I'll take my lumps. ...I larfed at the pun, however.

sno man:one sentence missing from the article for the curious:"According to the Old Farmer's Almanac, the longer the middle brown band, the milder and shorter the coming winter; the shorter the brown band, the longer and more severe winter will be."So the stock photo isn't from this year either.good effort John Beauge!

I found this guy a couple weeks ago. SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING!! /Yeah I know it's a caterpillar of a Giant Leopard Moth, not the usual Isabella Tiger Moth.